Way north bass guy

Huh. Hope all is well, he’s on here a lot.

Was even worse today. I got home about 1:00 and had to blow the driveway out. First time I’ve ever blown out the drive with a skidoo helmet on. There’s no way I’d be able to do it in that wind with just a hat and hoodie like I usually do. Any exposed skin started to hurt in about a minute! Good thing is all next week is pretty much supposed to be back up above freezing during the days.

When I got home today around 3:00, it was just below freezing. The wind started to absolutely scream across the fields just about then, and the temps started to plummet. Supposed to hit -40 wind chills here tonight too. We had some crazy squalls here as well. At one point I couldn’t see my barn which is only about 50yds from the house. Nosed the truck into the front of the boat shed and plugged the block heater into the timer for the morning, and I’m gonna have to snow blow the driveway out before I even try to go to work. The entire driveway is drifted right across, pretty much 3’ deep. Next week is supposed to be above freezing for a good portion of the week, crazy temp swings this year! Took this pic just as the squalls stopped, you can still see the dark clouds in the distance.

Seeing how I’m pretty much exactly east of you on the other side of Georgian Bay, looks like we’re getting the same stuff. Not bad though, we haven’t had anything even remotely close to those temps all year so far, and by Monday it’s supposed to be right back up to around the freezing mark. We have got about 2’ more snow in the last several days though, and another 6-12” supposed to come tomorrow. I’m about done with cleaning driveways and decks/steps off after work in the dark every day.

The kid and I drove the sleds over to my brothers house today, and put about 25 miles on them, all bushwhacking with him and my niece. Went way back to a tiny, secluded lake that’s almost perfectly round, and surrounded by bog swamp. It’s a pretty cool spot, very peaceful and quiet. Lake is only about 8’ deep, we’ve fished it several times and it is packed full of hammer handle pike that are almost coffee coloured from the tannins in the water.

Our son came into our home 12 years ago, he was 14 months old at the time. We tried having our own kids for several years, didn’t work out for us, so we went the adoption route. Like any parents, we’ve had our not so fun days from time to time, but it’s been the most rewarding thing I’ve ever had the opportunity to do in my life.

Montreal steak spice goes on quite a bit of beef, as well as in any ground beef or venison I usually cook. We use quite a bit of garlic powder ( not garlic salt), unless we have fresh garlic in the pantry, which is actually quite often. Other than the usual spices for baking etc, I mainly use pepper. Pretty much every single dinner meal I eat has pepper on it, and often quite a bit. I do love some fresh ground pepper! Can’t even remember the last time I touched a shaker of table salt, we don’t even have one in the house.

Yeah I was just goofing. Should make a huge difference for you though, both with speed as well as giving you a bit more clearance in shallow water. All round a good addition.

Careful you don’t get her chine walking too much now ?.

Nice! Let’s see some pics now.

That’ll be a good rig for frogging in the pads ?

I have a few quiet spots. For many years, I’ve spent a fair bit of time out on Georgian Bay. There’s quite a bit of boat traffic in the summers on the main channels and close to town, but once you get about 1/2 hour away from town, there’s literally hundreds of back bays and offshore shoals where you’ll never see another human all day, no matter what time of year it is. My newest quiet spot, also my new favourite, is the river that runs right through my property we bought two years ago. I have a section about 500yds long that goes directly through my land, no boats can access it other than a canoe or kayak from the lake it runs out of, and I doubt there was even a single one through here the last couple years other than me. I can walk across my field after work in the summer, and sit there on the shore or float the canoe and catch a bunch of smallmouth and largemouth on topwaters, some sort of Texas rig or with the fly rod. All you hear is the frogs and birds. It is truly heaven, right behind my house!

At 43, I’ve never been in a real fist fight. Couple little tussles with my brother when we were kids, but that’s it. Like some others have mentioned, I’m pretty decent at “reading the room”, and mostly have just gotten out of there before the crap hit the fan. Also, I’ve never really hung around people that tend to be violent like that, so it just never really happened. Now I do sometimes have a bit of a short fuse, but it’s pretty much always towards some dumb thing I’ve done myself, and doesn't usually have anything to do with another person. I suppose if it came down to protecting a loved one, I could get pretty wild, and let loose the “ country boy with stonemason strength” on someone, but I’m hoping to only have to use those powers on fireplace and patio stones ?

There’s a few lakes around me that have both pike and muskies, and just the right conditions to produce naturally occurring tigers ( no muskie stocking around here). I’ve caught quite a few of them over the years, both targeting them as well as by catch while bass fishing. I’d say that the above posts are all good info for tigers. I’d say most of mine have also come on smaller lures than the traditional “big” muskie baits. Quite a few have been either on a smaller in-line spinner such as the #5 mepps, or a standard sized bass jerkbait. I’ve also caught quite a few on a double willow spinnerbait, same size I’d use for big small mouth.

Man, that’s a pretty long drive for fake lobster ?

Yup, pretty tasty stuff! I haven’t had it in a while now but we used to cut it in bite sized chunks, boil it a little bit then dip in melted butter. Fantastic eats! Won’t be long now and they’ll be getting pretty easy to catch around here ( provided we get safe enough ice to get out on). They come shallow on offshore points and humps in Feb/March at night to spawn under the ice, and you can get a ton of them at night jigging through the ice around here in some of the larger, deeper lakes. They actually fight pretty decent too, especially when you get one over 5lbs or so.

We’ve had the first two full days in a row of sunshine here in quite a while. Temps are more “normal” like right now at night ( -20c or so), but the daytime temp was right up around freezing and even above today in the sun. Feels more like March than January, and this coming week it’s supposed to get above freezing a bit again. Not a typical winter for us at all, but I’ll take it. My son and I did manage to beat the fields into a pulp this afternoon with the sleds, might be as far as we get in them all year, and that’s fine by me.

Took a walk down to the river behind the house this afternoon. We finally got down to -20c here last night for pretty much the first time this winter. With all the mild weather and rain we’ve had of late, the river is still pretty high and flowing, not much ice on it. Even still, I don’t think I’ll be getting the canoe out just yet ?

I’ve caught a bunch of random things over the years. About the biggest though was some idiot with a fly rod. Tossing a big streamer fly and a huge side wind gusted on the back cast, and sunk that hook right to the barb, dead centre in the nose! Bad words were said! Oh yeah, that idiot was myself.

Up here in Ontario where I am, our bass season isn’t open till after they spawn, but we still get quite a few incidental bass while fishing for pike in the spring. Like others have mentioned, they move fast when the ice goes, as we don’t have a super long growing season anyway, so they take advantage of any heat that they can get. I’ve caught quite a few real big bass in just inches of water, right after the ice leaves, while I’m casting for spawning pike. In my neck of the woods, pretty much anytime you find any sort of creek, small river or other runoff coming into a back bay, you can pretty much guarantee that there’ll be big bass up there cruising, looking for anything that’s washed down, even within a day or two of the ice going. I’ve seen some absolute monster bass up shallow, cruising right beside the big pike.

Guess I’m one of the lucky ones ( so far anyway). At 43 I still have excellent vision, and hope it stays that way. My dad started wearing glasses at around 35 or so, eventually he got to bifocals, then about 8 years ago he had cataracts, and they did lazar surgery while they were cleaning up the cataracts, and he threw away his glasses after that. He’s 73 now and still going without glasses. I’ve always worn pretty dark sunglasses while being outside either for fishing, or work, or really anytime I’m outside. Can’t stand to be without them especially if it’s sunny. Maybe that has helped a bit to fend off the eyesight devils, at least as far as sun damage goes.

Been a crazy week and a half around here. From the 24th to about the 28th we got 4’ of snow, and crazy drifting and winds. The last few days have been above freezing, and since about 4:00 this afternoon it’s been raining, and pouring hard for the last couple hours. All that snow is down to about a foot deep or so now, and by morning could be way less left. There’s not a lot of real cold weather in the forecast for the next week or more at least, all the larger lakes are still wide open with no signs of freezing up much at all. I’m sure we’ll get a deep freeze yet, and the lakes will lock up, but it’s not going to be for a very long time, and fingers crossed I’ll have the boat out of hibernation fairly early next spring.

Ditto, mine was 5.8lbs

Around here, it’s big, hard pulling lake trout. The first little while after ice out can be dynamite for huge lakers as they move right up into the shallows to chase spawning smelt and other baitfish. We usually troll with inline planer boards and jerkbaits, or flashy spoons, and get some real monsters. I’ve caught them up to 40lbs in waist deep water as soon as the ice goes out. Once the first of May rolls around, I switch gears to big, shallow pike. Super fun to sight fish for until the water warms and they creep a bit deeper towards the main lake basins.

Just to get out a bit more often, even if it’s only for an hour or two every now and again. There were lots of times last year when I could’ve popped the boat in the lake for an evening fish, but just didn’t get around to it. This year, my major house, and outside yard projects are pretty much caught up, so I’m just gonna get my butt out there more instead of working around the house so much.